Wednesday, September 24, 2014

You see I am a writer, an unpublished author and my novel is waiting to be published via Amazon e-books. You can read the “blurb” on the “Mrs Egeland’s Other Projects” page which you will find on the right.

I am so devoted to my characters that I had decided that I would write at least two more novels, one about the characters parents and another about the characters 1o years on. Except that getting my novel published has taken such a lot out of me, with drafts and the simple pressures of getting things done, that there has been no time or basically any inspiration to write.

I think as well that by deciding to write two more novels about the same set of people, or at least the same setting has stifled my inspiration.

Not so long ago I met a young woman, a sprite of creative spark, she’s a graphic artist who writes her own graphic novels. She’s young and full of vigour, she has her own style and generally a wonderful person. She is the sister-in-law of my friend, one of my best friends, a woman who has raw talent, seemingly unlimited patience and four beautiful children. This friend and her husband live in beautiful Kvinnherad, which is quite a distance from the city of Bergen and thankfully my husband and her husband are good friends. So we occasionally take a weekend and go visit, and that’s when this little sprite shows me all her drawings.

This time, on my way home, I tried to picture my little sprite as one of my characters, and I was inspired. Suddenly I could see her, her hair streaming out behind her, her arms outstretched with a piercing light shining behind her. I don’t know what this character is, or who, or even if she’s going to be in one of the books, but I know that she needs a story. She can’t just inhabit my mind, even if she is based on my friend, she must live in fiction.

As I said, I’m inspired, but not really to write blog posts.

I hope that I will soon be able to tell you where you can acquire my first novel, so that you can all read it and tell me what you think. I’d love to know, its nothing like this blog! However its the facets of a personality that makes it interesting. Creativity comes in all shapes and sizes, domestic and otherwise.

Until next time

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Most writers will tell you the same, that they live their lives in a kind of creative insanity. Where characters grow and develop like seedlings that creep into your garden, where plots sprout like weeds and conversations breed like rabbits. Most writers will also tell you that their pockets are full of scraps of paper and half empty biro's, that their studies are littered with half filled notebooks and that they crave paper like an alcoholic craves whisky. It doesn't even matter that we live in the 21st century where the computer is almost surgically attached to us at birth, to a writer the most beautiful thing is a sheet of clean white paper. The purest form of creativity is a coffee stained manuscript, dog eared and underlined, with notes on plot and character formation in the margins.

We're a strange breed of stationary hungry psychotics, who destroy pens, pencils and pads of paper. Computer keyboards soon become illegible, but the true writer doesn't care, they touch type even if it's in a highly unusual way with their forefingers and their big toes. Libraries are filed with untapped talent gazing enviously at the published works of others, growing suicidal as they critically read their own work and throw it away in disgust.

Only the brave or lucky get published by anyone but a vanity press. The rest of us struggle under the feeling of failure that nags at our ego's, screaming and shouting when we read something that's been published that reads like a five year old's attempt at literature and tastes as plain as boiled rice or unseasoned porridge. But we're not as ice cold as all that, we applaud the few of us that have made their names, have published and become renowned. They give us fuel to strive for the same, to write the great American novel or the next Great British Classic, they show us that it is possible for the great and the good, for the brave and the few to become household names.

They are the ones that make writing an accessible art form, that make the poor undiscovered authors heroes instead of wasters.

The writer is the only truly free mind, the one that can escape this materialistic scheme and travel the horizons of the mind. That with the stroke of a humble pen can take their readers to new and exotic surroundings, they see the world in a completely different light, as intricate and interesting, as woven tapestries hanging in the halls of life. They paint the world with words and show the foibles and shining qualities of humanity. They wield a power unknown to others, to shape the minds of their fellows and change the world with their lyrics.

So when you read something online, like this blog, for example, think of the poor humble, probably unpublished author on the other side of the screen. Give them respect and pity them, for they are the undiscovered gems of humanity.